BYLINE: By MARGIE WYLIE; Margie Wylie can be contacted at
margie.wylie(at)newhouse.com

BODY:

Police departments across the country are buying the controversial Computer
Voice Stress Analyzer, which its manufacturer claims can tell when a person is
lying merely by the sound of his voice. When a suspect speaks, a computer
program "listens" for minute vocal shifts that, in theory, indicate
stress.

The technology's critics, citing government and university research, say the
CVSA is little more than an electronic Ouija board with accuracy rates to match.
At best, they say, voice stress analysis scares suspects into confessions; at
worst, it can incriminate the innocent. CVSA results aren't admissable in most
courts, under the same Supreme Court decisions that generally bar polygraph
evidence.

Even so, police officers love it. Cheaper and faster than the polygraph, the
CVSA can be operated with a few days' training and without the need to
"wire up" a suspect. It can also be used in the field, covertly, and
on tape recordings, according to the National Institute for Truth Verification
of West Palm Beach, Fla., its manufacturer.

Between 1999 and 2000, NITV added 100 new customers. So far in 2001, NITV
officials say nearly 300 police departments have bought at least one CVSA. Some
have bought several, and nearly all "have put their polygraph on the
shelf," said David Hughes, a retired police captain and executive director
of the company.

Originating from a Cold War military project, voice stress analysis was first
commercialized in the early 1970s.

NITV, founded in 1986, has a virtual lock on the law-enforcement
market,according to both the company and its critics. It has sold its $10,000
CVSA to more than 1,100 police departments and trained more than 4,200 CVSA
operators at about $1,300 each, Hughes said.

The company's Web site is replete with testimonials and success stories. One
Alabama police department is said to have solved a murder case 14 years cold by
re-interviewing the main suspect with the CVSA. The suspect had previously taken
four polygraphs given by three different examiners, all inconclusive. Confronted
with three failed voice stress tests, he broke down and confessed.

Researchers counter that nothing in 30 years of studies proves that voice
stress analysis works, either generally or in the specific case of the CVSA.

"Voice stress analysis is a fraud. It has zero validity," said
David T. Lykken, a psychology professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota
in Minneapolis and author of the book "A Tremor in the Blood: Uses and
Abuses of the Lie Detector."

A 1996 Department of Defense Polygraph Institute study of the CVSA found that
the device performs no better than chance in detecting deception. In other
words, guessing or flipping a coin would be as accurate as the test. Based on
this study, the Department of Defense, the Central Intelligence Agency and the
Federal Bureau of Investigation do not use voice stress tests.

Vincent Sedgwick says he was arrested in a rape case because of the test. In
1996, the Henderson, Nev., man had never heard of a voice stress lie detector.
But, eager to clear himself of suspicion, he took the test, and failed.

"When we're done with the machine, (the examiner) tells me it looks like
I'm lying," Sedgwick said. "I was shocked. I had 100 percent faith it
would clear me. It didn't dawn on me until later that this thing is a
sham."

Henderson police said in court filings that the arrest was based on evidence
other than the CVSA results. Sedgwick was accused of being a lookout while a
rape took place, but a judge threw out the charge for lack of evidence. But the
35-year-old juvenile probation officer remains shaken by the experience.

Terry Bowler, the department's public information officer, said that
Henderson police no longer use the CVSA a development he chalked up primarily to
cost-cutting, but which he acknowledged was colored by the experience with
Sedgwick.

"What people need to understand is that it's a dangerous device,"
said Ian Christopherson, a Las Vegas attorney who defended Sedgwick and who
later filed an unsuccessful civil rights suit on Sedgwick's behalf.

Christopherson cited a 1998 case in Escondido, Calif., in which police used
the CVSA to elicit confessions from Michael Crowe, then 14, and two teena-age
friends in the stabbing murder of Crowe's 12-year-old sister, Stephanie.

On the eve of the teens' trial, the charges were dropped. The victim's blood
was found spattered on the clothing of Richard Tuite, a transient who had been
pounding on neighborhood doors the night of the murder.

In a 1999 civil rights suit against San Diego County, prosecutors and
detectives, and NITV, the boys' families said the CVSA not only had focused the
investigation on the teens and away from Tuite, but had played a central role in
extracting confessions that proved to be false.

Tuite has never been charged, said Denise Vedder, public affairs officer for
the San Diego County district attorney. The civil suit is on hold pending the
outcome of the murder investigation, according to court documents.

Bill Endler, a retired police chief and director of international operations
for NITV, declined to comment on the Crowe case.

NITV's marketing materials claim a 98 percent accuracy rate for the CVSA, but
company officials acknowledge that the figure is based on anecdotes from
satisfied customers and not independent research.

Hughes dismissed anti-CVSA research as "parlor games" engineered by
polygraphists who are losing jobs to the voice stress test. The studies don't
work, he said, because research subjects aren't in jeopardy of losing their
freedom or their lives. Such jeopardy, he said, is the key.

But critics say the device doesn't detect lies in the field, either.

Polygraphs already use at least three different measures of stress. "If
voice worked, we could just add that measure into the mix," said Frank
Horvath, past president of the American Polygraph Association and a professor in
the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University, who has researched
voice stress analysis for three decades.

Instead, "detectives are using (voice stress tests) in policing as a
ploy to get people to confess," Horvath said.

Lykken agreed, pointing out that police for years have coaxed confessions
from suspects with fake lie detectors, even pressing photocopying machines and
police radios into service in the ploy. The CVSA is just one more ruse, he said.

Police interviewed agreed that getting confessions is the CVSA's main appeal.
"There are a lot of confessions that happen before we start the test.
Sometimes we never have to even open it. It's very nice, very nice," said
CVSA operator Detective Sgt. Stephen Odom of the Berkeley (Calif.) Police
Department's Youth Services Detail.

CVSA operators are taught to persuade suspects that the test is accurate. As
Odom put it: "What matters isn't reality, but that person's perception of
reality."

Critics, however, worry that police, not just suspects, begin to believe in
the device. "A cop who has gotten 20 bona fide confessions on this thing is
going to start to believe it is 100 percent accurate," said Christopherson,
Sedgwick's lawyer.

NITV says the CVSA works by detecting and charting an inaudible "microtremor"
in the voice. Truthful statements produce a peaked pattern,while stress, or
lies, produce a flattened top. A 1981 study published in the Journal of Forensic
Sciences, however, could not detect voice microtremors, much less correlate them
with stress or lying.

"What people are looking for is an easy solution," said Darren
Haddad, an electronics engineer who studies voice stress analysis for the Air
Force Research Lab Information Directorate in Rome, N.Y., which researches and
acquires technology for the Air Force.

Haddad, in a 2000 study, found that two commercial analyzers were accurate in
detecting stress, but couldn't differentiate between stress caused by anger,
fear, lying or just needing a bathroom break.

According to the lab, NITV declined to join that test, which was conducted
with the National Institute of Justice, the research and development branch of
the U.S. Department of Justice. NITV also blocked the lab's efforts to obtain
the CVSA through a local police department, Haddad said.

Hughes said the company was wary of researchers after the 1996 Defense
Department study. The CVSA failed in that study, he said, because the company's
recommendations for testing were ignored.

Haddad's most recent study found that volume pitch, and several other voice
characteristics can indicate overall stress, and that the greater the number of
voice measures used, the more accurately stress was detected.

Horvath, Haddad and others acknowledge that there may some day be a reliable
way to screen people's voices for stress caused by lying. But so far, they have
not found it.

Meanwhile, the CVSA continues to sell to police departments across the
country mostly by word of mouth, said Hughes.

"One sells two and two sells four and so on," he said. "Our
business has grown exponentially."

1. Log on to LEXIS. Using the Combined
Federal and State Case Law database, search for case law on the admissibility of
voice stress analysis evidence.

Run the following search:
voice stress analysis

2. Select the case Barrel of Fun, Inc.
v. State Farm.

What court originally heard this case? To
what court was the decision appealled?

What type of "voice stress
analysis" was used and under what circumstances?

What did the appellate court decide
regarding the admissibility of the evidence?

Why?

Select the core concept "Evidence:
Witnesses: Expert Testimony". Click on the document icon. Where does it
take you?

Return to the core concept "Evidence:
Witnesses: Expert Testimony". Click on the hyperlink. Where does it
take you?

From this new page, select Weinstein's
Federal Evidence. What information does this link provide?

Return to the new page. Select Option 2 and
then "suggest words and concepts" for expert testimony.

Select "expert witness" and
excluded as search terms. Run the search in the State Evidence Cases
database. How many cases do you retrieve?

Return to Barrel of Fun, Inc..
Shepardize the case. How many cases from the Fifth Circuit cite this
decision?

Examine the other citing cases. Has the U.
S. Supreme Court cited this case? If so, in what case and for what purpose?

Examine the citing case Viterbo v. Dow
Chemical Co.. For what purpose was Barrel of Fun cited? What kind
of case is Viterbo? Why do you think the issues in Barrel of Fun
are relevant to this case?

Examine the other places in which Barrel
of Fun has been cited. Has the case been cited by any Louisiana state
court? If so, which one, and what case? What is the issue in this case? What
reasons does the court give for its decision to exclude or include the
polygraph evidence in this case?

Has the case been cited by any law review
articles? Any Louisiana law review articles? Select one of these and look at
the text. Look at the footnotes. Note that many have highlighted blue text.
What does this mean?

3. Return to your original list of cases. Select the case United States v.
Traficant.

Select the option "more like
this". What does the resulting screen allow you to do?

Who is James Traficant? What happened to him
after this case? If you don't know, how could you find out?

On what grounds was voice stress analysis
evidence excluded?

Do you think the result would have been
different had the case been heard this year? Why do you think so?

In what reporters does the case appear? Does
the Law Library have these reporters? How do you know?

Shepardize the case. Has it been cited by a
Louisiana court? Select it and examine the case. What is (or was) the law
regarding voice stress analysis admissibility in Louisiana at the time? Who
were the judges in this case? From what court was this case appealled? Who
were the attorneys in the case?

4. Select the database State Cases,
Combined Courts.

Using the "Document segment" for attorneys
(Counsel) search for the second attorney (Bernard Boudreaux) mentioned in the
Louisiana state case you found in #3. What position has Boudreaux held since
trying the case you found in #3.

Using the News Group File, Past Two Years
file search Boudreaux's name: Bernard w/2 Boudreaux and Louisiana. What job
does he have now?

Who had the job before Boudreaux? (Try this
search: governor w/10 louisiana and mike foster and executive counsel). How
much was he making? Do you know him or know of him personally? What does he
make now? (if you can't tell how could you find out? and why would this
information be available?)

5. Log off LEXIS and log on
to WESTLAW. Examine the directory (tap at the top of the screen) and the list of
"default" databases WESTLAW gives you on the opening screen.

Examine the resulting list of cases. Can you
find the same ones you looked at on LEXIS?

Examine the special features WESTLAW offers
you including the searchable topics and key numbers. Where have you seen these
before? Which topics and key numbers seem especially relevant to a search on
voice stress analysis admissibility? Why?

Select the topic and key number for hearsay
evidence: 157k555.4(3). Search on the topic and key number.

Note that this search takes you to a
"digest" screen. What features does this screen offer you to make your search
more precise?

Prepare a search for all state cases for
this topic and key number and including the additional terms voice /s stress
/s analysis. Why do you not need to include the word "admissibility"? Ask for
the most cited cases and include law reviews and other materials? Do not
restrict the date or court.

What result? Look at your result. Is it
relevant to the question of the admissibility of voice stress analysis? Why do
you think it is so limited? How would you expand your search?

Edit your search screen by deleting the
topic and key number. Look at the resulting screen. Browse the topics and key
numbers available (or put in an appropriate topic number). Search on that
topic and the added search terms voice /s stress /s analysis. What results?

Change to the database for all state
and federal cases. Search voice /s stress /s analysis /p admissibility. Select
the case Stone-Bey v. Debruyn. What do you notice about this case?

Select the case State v.
Higginbotham. Click on the choice "KeyCite Notes". What do you find?

Select a printed digest (either Louisiana,
some other state or a federal digest) for the topic 157 (evidence). Examine
the formatting of the cases. Note the differences in using the printed digest
and the online digest. How would you update the information in the printed
digest?